Holding a Silver Dollar

Leslie Jerome Thaden was a small boy during the time now known as the Great Depression.[1]  He was young enough that he didn’t realize his family was considered poor.  It was life as he had always known it, and he doesn’t remember ever hearing anyone refer to the times as a Depression while it was going on.  He didn’t realize there was any other kind of life. 

Life as he knew it consisted of some of his unique chores.  It was his job to walk the neighborhood and scout around for scrap wood his family could use in their fireplace.[2]  On the journey he also picked up any glass bottles he found.  He then sold these to bootleggers.[3]

He earned money in other ways as well.  He sold newspapers on the street corners.  His was the voice one would hear yelling, “Read all about it; the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor!”  He also sold candy.  He stocked up from a corner grocery store then ventured out to see how many he could sell.  He also shined shoes; he made his own shoe shine kit and set up on the sidewalk to earn a few cents.[4]  He then turned his earnings over to his parents. 

Les lived in the city of Jacksonville, Florida, and remembers distinctly the lines of men waiting for food and for work.  His own father was self-employed and Les recalls his family was never hungry; they always had something to eat.  His father was often paid in kind and brought home food in return for his services as a night watchman.  Through this bartering, Les’ father was also able to provide presents at birthdays and Christmas for his wife and five children. 

Sometimes, when his father needed to buy food, he didn’t always have the money, but he had a 1900 silver dollar that was very special to him.[5]  The grocer would hold the silver dollar in exchange for some groceries until Les’ father could pay the grocer what he owed. 

The children of the Depression era were very resourceful and imaginative.  They played their pretend games with all sorts of items.  They played grocery store with items such as grass, leaves, and sticks and old cans from the garbage.  Les made his own pop guns using bamboo, china berries, a clothes pin, and a slice of rubber from an old inner tube.  He also made his own scooters, toy sailboats, and go carts. 

Some people say America is in an economic crisis today because many people are losing their jobs and homes, and many businesses are folding.  Les acknowledges that these unfortunate events are occurring; however he does not feel the people of this country are suffering as much as the people were during the Depression of the 1930s—not when he sees individuals still spending money on sports and restaurants, not when he sees people still using cell phones and frequenting the mall, not when he sees folks making trips to Disneyland and sailing on cruises to Mexico. 

He will be the first to acknowledge that people didn’t have these sorts of items or opportunities when he was a boy.  They had so few of these extras that would have been considered luxuries back then but are considered necessities today.  Since these luxuries didn’t even exist, they didn’t miss them.  He realizes that his mother cooked their meals from scratch only because meals in a box or can or in a frozen dinner tray simply did not exist.  He also adds that his mother did a lot of clothing repair.  Interestingly, mending is a dying art today.  Since his family lived in town, they didn’t even have a car.  They walked everywhere they went or rode the street car.

Les concludes that the times were harder on the population during the Great Depression, even though they didn’t have as much to do without as people would today.  If the people of today had to start living as he did as a boy, they would have no cell phones, no television, no computer games and no ipods.  They would have no fast food and less variety of food in general and no electric refrigerators.   They would have only one or two pairs of shoes and their clothes would be mended many times over and perhaps remade.  If he sees people living like this again, he will feel satisfied that the current economic crisis can be compared to the Great Depression.



Les' father, Herman Meigs Thaden juggles a happy baby Charles Herman on
 his hip c1925.  He holds his hat in his left hand.  Les says his father never went
anywhere without his hat.  Notice the strap across his chest and the law
  enforcement badge pinned to his shirt.  The strap perhaps held his holstered
     pistol.  Some say he was a deputy; others say he worked for the police
    department.  Perhaps his association with city law enforcement had something
      to do with his job as night watchman for the downtown businesses on his beat. 

 

Angela Thaden Hahn

29 April 2009

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[1] Les Thaden was born in 1928.

[2] Interestingly, homes in Jacksonville, Florida, were built with fireplaces.  There are a few mornings and evenings during the Jacksonville winters that can be chilly.

[3] Bootleggers are usually associated with the Prohibition years of the 1920s.  Perhaps in actuality, Les’ bottles were sold to folks who processed their own spirits.  Most everyone during the Depression years had to be frugal with recycled items of all kinds.

[4] Les came from a Syrian merchant background.  Though he doesn’t remember, it is quite possible he stocked up at the store of a Syrian owner.  By selling the merchandise, he was simply peddling.  Many Syrian merchants operated in this manner.  Likewise, with his shoe shine kit, he may very well have set up outside the Syrian and Greek owned shoe shops and dry cleaning businesses.

[5] This 1900 silver dollar may have been special to Les’ father because that is the year he was born.